S  A  M  O  S  E  T 

AN     APPRECIATION 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


S    A    M    O    S    E    T 

AN     APPRECIATION 


"Welcome,  Englishmen!" 


[Reprinted from  Sylvester's  "Indian  Wars  of  Neio 
England"] 


BOSTON 

W.  B.  CLARKE   COMPANY 
1910 


Copyright,  igio 
By  Herbert  M.  Sylvester 


Done  at 
The  Everett  Press,  Boston 


But  about  ye  16.  of  M  a  r  c  h  a  cer- 

taine  Indian  came  bouldly  amongst 
them,  and  spoke  to  them  in  broken 
English,  which  they  could  well  under- 
stand, but  marvelled  at  it.  .  .  .  His 
name  was  S  a  m  o  s  e  t. 

— BRADFORD'S  JOURNAL. 

Fryday,  the  16.  (March)  a  fayre 
warme  day  towards;  this  morning  we 
determined  to  conclude  of  the  military 
Orders,  which  we  had  begun  to  con- 
fider  of  before,  but  were  interrupted  by 
the  Savages,  as  we  mentioned  formerly; 
whilft  we  were  bufied  here  about,  we 
were  interrupted  againe,  for  there  pre- 
sented himself  a  Savage,  which 
caufed  an  Alarm,  he  very  boldly  came 
all  alone  and  along  the  houfes  ftraight 
to  the  Randevous,  where  we  intercepted 

[3] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


him,  fuffering  him  to  goe  in,  as 
undoubtedly  he  would,  out  of  his  bould- 
neff,  hee  fainted  vs  in  Englifh,  and 
bade  vs  well-come,  for  he  had  learned 
fome  broken  Englifh  among  ft  the  Eng- 
lifh men  that  came  to  fifh  at  M  o  n- 
c  h  i  g  g  o  n,  and  knew  by  name  the 
moft  of  the  Captaines,  Commanders  fcf 
M  afters,  that  vfually  come,  he  was  a 
man  free  in  fpeech,  fo  farre  as  he  could 
expreffe  his  minde,  and  of  feemly  car- 
riage, .  .  .  the  wind  beginning  to  rise 
a  little,  we  caft  a  horfemans  coat  about 
him,  for  he  was  ftarke  naked,  onely  a 
leather  about  his  waft,  with  a  fringe 
about  a  fpan  long,  or  little  more;  he 
had  a  bow  &  2  arrowes,  the  one  headed, 
and  the  other  vnheaded;  he  was  a  tall 
ftraight  man,  the  haire  of  his  head 
blacke,  long  behind,  onely  fhort  before, 
none  on  his  face  at  all;  he  asked  fome 

[4] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


beere,  but  we  gaue  him  ftrong  water, 
and  bisket,  and  butter,  and  cheefe,  & 
pudding,  and  a  peece  of  a  mallerd,  all 
which  he  liked  well,  and  had  been 
acquainted  with  fuch  amongft  the  Eng- 
lifh;  .  .  .  all  the  after-noone  we  fpent 
in  communication  with  him,  .  .  . 

— MOURT'S  RELATION. 


[si 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 

'O  character  of  aborig- 
inal New  England  can 
be  likened  to  Samoset. 
Like  a  mountain-peak 
outlined  against  the 
dawn,  he  stands  the 
one  great  exponent  of 
the  Abenake  race  before  it 
had  been  corrupted  by  the 
vices  of  the  English  and  the 
French  pioneer.  His  mem- 
ory is  the  sweet  breath  of  the 
woods,  the  songs  of  the  birds, 
and  all  the  harmonies  in  nature.  His 
currents  of  manhood  ran  deep,  and  all 
his  instincts  were  of  gentleness  and 
peace.  He  was  as  God  made  him,  a 
high  priest  of  nature;  and  one  forgets 

[6] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


that  he  was  a  savage,  so  predominant 
was  his  native  nobility  as  a  man  and 
a  friend. 

Samoset  was  the  William  Penn  of 
his  untutored  race,  the  solicitous  friend 
of  the  first  English  who  came  into  the 
waters  about  Pemaquid,  and  no  ad- 
verse circumstance  could  sway  his 
loyalty.  He  was  as  steadfast  in  this 
peculiar  virtue  as  the  headland  of  old 
Sabino  that  marked  the  southern 
boundary  of  his  domain  before  he 
parted  with  it  to  Brown. 

One  would  like  to  know  just  where 
his  clustered  wigwams  lent  the  in- 
cense of  their  fires  to  the  winds.  As 
one  writer  says,  he  was  first  to  wel- 
come the  English  settler  in  his  mother 
tongue  and  the  first  to  part  with  his 
hunting-lands,  voluntarily.  It  was  a 
significant  act,  and  pregnant  with 

[7] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


ominous  prophecy  to  the  aborigine. 
Among  his  people  he  stands  alone. 
Among  the  traditions  of  the  red  man 
he  seems  more  a  mythical  personage 
than  a  real. 

Bradford  notes  that  the  afternoon 
of  Samoset's  first  appearance  at  Plym- 
outh was  spent  in  conversation.  One 
would  have  enjoyed  being  of  that 
famous  company.  Whether  poet  or 
painter  essayed  the  scene,  it  was  a 
subject  for  an  idyllic  treatment.  It 
was  a  prophetic  episode  of  the  highest 
historic  quality,  with  no  setting  of 
palatial  seat  of  government,  but,  in- 
stead, the  crudities  of  a  rude  shelter 
whose  interior  was  as  barren  and 
homely  as  its  environment  was  rug- 
gedly primitive,  with  the  shifting 
sands  of  Cape  Cod  and  the  sailless 
sea  for  a  foreground.  One  doubts  not 

[8] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


but  the  entertainment  was  ample,  and 
here  was  a  feast  of  reason  and  a  flow 
of  soul  and  a  congenial  mingling  of 
sincerity,  unalloyed  by  the  cult  of  a 
Richelieu  or  a  Talleyrand,  to  crystal- 
lize the  friendship  of  Samoset  into  a 
brilliant  of  the  first  water.  This  seems 
to  be  the  only  instance  recorded  of 
Samoset's  being  entertained  at  an 
English  table.  Levett's  account  is 
utterly  barren.  Brown  is  silent, 
though  Samoset  was  undoubtedly  a 
frequent  guest  of  the  English  after 
Shurt's  advent  into  Pemaquid  affairs. 
Abram  Shurt  was  evidently  a  cold- 
eyed  man  of  business,  whose  brain 
could  evolve  a  jurat  out  of  centuries  of 
legal  verbiage  in  a  single  sentence  that 
should  be  as  impeccable  as  the  point  of 
perfection  itself,  and  Samoset  finds  no 
place  in  his  daily  round  after  Brown's 

[9] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


title  to  Pemaquid  was  made  secure. 
Samoset  dropped  out  of  the  haunts  of 
men  as  a  star  from  the  night  sky.  His 
going  was  as  mysterious  as  his  com- 
ing. His  welcome  is  a  matter  of  his- 
tory. His  farewell  was  whispered  to 
the  winds. 

Over  on  Tappan's  Island,  not  far 
from  Damariscotta,  was  the  tradi- 
tional great  burial-place  of  the  Mon- 
hegan  Indians,  where  numerous  skele- 
tons of  the  aborigines  have  been  found. 
They  were  found  some  two  feet  below 
the  surface  of  the  ground,  and  were 
evidently  buried  in  a  sitting-posture, 
the  knees  drawn  upward,  and  facing 
the  sunrise.  In  some  instances  dimin- 
utive sheets  of  fine  copper  were  found 
above  the  skulls.  In  one  grave  was  a 
knife  with  a  copper  blade,  having 
a  bone  handle  —  possibly  of  French 

[10] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


origin.  It  was  a  custom  to  leave  with 
the  deceased  warrior  a  bit  of  food  and 
his  weapons  of  the  chase,  so  he  might 
be  prepared  for  his  entrance  into 
the  Happy  Hunting-grounds.  Samoset 
may  have  found  his  last  abiding-place 
for  the  body  here,  or  elsewhere.  It 
does  not  matter;  except  that,  savage 
though  he  was,  somewhere  overlook- 
ing the  dancing  waters  of  the  Sagada- 
hoc,  and  sometime  when  the  mad 
world  gets  over  its  rush,  the  domain  of 
this  one  of  nature's  noblemen  will  be 
fitly  honored  with  a  shaft  to  this  prince 
of  his  race. 

Samoset  was  great;  great  above  his 
environment,  if  one  can  be  greater 
than  nature;  greater  than  many  a 
paleface  whose  name  is  linked  with 
the  fortunes  of  those  early  days,  and 
because  his  greatness  was  au  naturel. 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


With  the  civilization  of  Winthrop  he 
would  have  been  a  greater  Winthrop. 
With  John  Winthrop's  tact,  John 
Eliot's  deeps  of  humanity,  and  Ex- 
perience Mayhew's  passionate  ardor, 
he  would  have  been  the  Lincoln  of  his 
time,  and  possibly  the  emancipator  of 
his  race.  He  flashed  across  the  low 
horizon  of  the  English  pioneers  like  a 
meteor  spanning  the  deeps  of  night, 
to  leave  a  luminous  trail  above  the 
sands  of  Cape  Cod.  He  recalls  the 
romance  of  the  woods  and  the  realm 
of  nature,  where  he  ruled  his  little 
dynasty;  and  marvel  though  it  be,  his 
memory  is  as  perennial  as  the  may- 
flower  that  even  yet  blooms  among 
the  rugged  places  once  familiar  to  his 
tread.  It  is  the  breath  of  the  wilding 
blossom  itself. 

He  reminds  one  of  John  crying  in 

[12] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


the  wilderness,  "Make  Way!"  a 
divinely  appointed  prophet  unwit- 
tingly announcing  the  doom  of  his 
race.  One  would  like  to  rend  the  pall 
off  those  last  days  of  Samoset.  His 
fall  was  like  that  of  a  giant  of  the 
woods,  to  lie  prone  among  the  lesser 
saplings  that  have  climbed  up  in  its 
genial  shade  like  children  clustering 
about  the  tale-making  old  man;  a 
mute  relic  of  a  former  grandeur,  the 
stateliest  shaft  of  the  forest,  whose 
head  was  soonest  to  catch  the  golden 
breaking  of  the  dawn  and  the  last  to 
receive  the  ruddy  benediction  of  the 
setting  sun;  the  landmark  of  a  little 
world  from  whose  dusky  spire  the 
vagrant  crow  turned  like  a  weather- 
cock, his  head  to  the  wind,  or  shouted 
his  raucous  challenge  to  the  sower  as 
he  scattered  his  seed  on  some  adjacent 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


hillside.  Here  were  the  poetry  and 
pathos  of  nature  to  mark  the  rounding 
of  a  woodland  cycle. 

So  fell  Samoset,  among  his  tribe  the 
greatest  of  his  kind,  and  in  the  do- 
mains of  his  ancestors  the  only  one  to 
be  remembered.  Mayhap  it  was  not 
long  after  his  dividing  his  coat  with 
John  Brown  that  this  fine  aboriginal 
spirit  faded  away  as  the  song  of  the 
thrush  into  the  silence  of  the  night. 
Nothing  more  is  heard  of  him;  for  his 
voice  was  drowned  in  the  jealous  activ- 
ities of  trade  at  old  Pemaquid;  and 
singular  it  is  that  this  silence  should 
have  been  so  abrupt.  Like  the  smokes 
of  his  fires  caught  up  by  the  winds  to 
disappear  within  the  mysteries  of  the 
deeper  wilderness  went  the  spirit  of 
Samoset. 

One  can  feel  the  drowsy  spell  that 

E«4] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


lay  over  the  woods  and  waters  of  the 
bay  as  his  sun  sank  through  a  cloud- 
less west,  and  conjure  up 

"The  soot-black  brows  of  men, —  the  yell 
Of  women  thronging  round  the  bed, — 
The  tinkling  charm  of  ring  and  shell, — 
The  Powah  whispering  o'er  the  dead;*' 

but  one  likes  rather  to  think  Samoset's 
ear  attuned  to  the  songs  of  the  birds, 
the  myriad  notes  of  the  woods  that 
had  been  his  friends,  silent  yet  sturdy, 
and  the  sighing  requiem  of  the  purr- 
ing winds  to  paint  along  the  walls  of 
his  lodge  the  shadow-dance  of  the 
leaves. 

But  the  pathos  of  an  Indian  burial! 
How  simple,  how  gently  solicitous,  and 
how  abounding  in  faith  were  these 
rude  children  of  the  forest  in  these 
last  rites!  Those  Happy  Hunting- 
grounds  were  far  away  to  them,  yet 

[•5] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


very  near  to  Samoset;  for  the  Great 
Spirit  was  everywhere, —  in  the  broad 
pennons  of  the  spindling  maize;  the 
purling  streams;  the  glowing  heats  of 
the  summer  sun;  the  fulness  of  the 
harvest  moon;  the  mist-wrought 
clouds;  and  in  all  things  sweet,  benefi- 
cent, and  beautiful  as  the  seasons 
came  and  went  with  their  infinite 
variety;  but  those  illimitable  preserves 
of  fish  and  game,  the  wide  hunting- 
lands  of  the  Hereafter,  were  beyond 
the  Waumbek  Methna  where  the  sun 
wrought  the  fabric  of  the  night.  It 
was  a  journey  of  how  many  sleeps,  or 
even  moons,  they  knew  not. 

When  the  sachem  had  been  arrayed 
in  his  hunting-suit  of  deer-skin  tanned 
to  the  softest  of  chamois,  and  his 
feathered  head-dress  was  as  he  liked 
best  to  wear  it,  his  people  hollowed 

[16] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


out  a  shallow  seat  in  Mother  Earth's 
lap,  and  there  they  gently  set  him 
down,  with  his  knees  drawn  up  to  his 
chin,  his  inert  arms  folded  over  them, 
his  head  bent  statuesquely  like  that  of 
a  seer;  for  his  face  was  turned  to  the 
Spirit  of  Life  when  it  should  next  her- 
ald the  dawn  above  the  far  eastern 
rim  of  the  sea.  His  bow,  arrow,  and 
axe  were  placed  by  his  side,  and  a 
pouch  of  parched  corn, —  that  of 
which  he  was  so  fond  when  the  win- 
ter snows  lay  deep  and  he  had  hung 
his  snow-shoes  in  the  wigwam  smoke 
to  dry  the  wet  in  their  thongs, —  that 
he  might  have  that  with  which  to  re- 
fresh himself  as  he  traveled  his  lonely 
way. 

There  were  no  swathings  of  fine 
linen;  no  redolent  spices;  no  magic 
rites; — only  the  committing  of  dust 

[17] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


to  dust.  The  moist  earth  caressed  his 
face.  He  was  in  his  mother's  arms, 
and  she  held  him  as  closely  to  her 
bosom  as  a  nursing  babe.  It  was  the 
hospitality  that  speeds  the  parting 
guest  who  has  gone  out  into  the  swift- 
falling  shadows  of  the  night,  whose 
obscurities  are  veiled  by  the  mists  of 
sorrow. 

So  Samoset  returned  to  the  myste- 
rious fountain  which  has  flowed  down 
all  the  years  since  Time  began.  Those 
who  came  after  him  to  upturn  the 
sacred  ground  with  vandal  hands  may 
have  found  but  a  nameless  hero  in  a 
nameless  grave.  The  deep  Pemaquid 
woods  faded  as  he  went,  as  if  in  sym- 
pathy. They  withered  at  the  white 
man's  touch. 

Samoset's  nature  was  the  reflex  of 
the  scenes  he  loved  best, —  quiet,  gen- 

[18] 


S  A  M  O  S  E  T 


erous,  and  unobtrusive.  He  is  not  re- 
membered as  a  savage,  the  sachem  of 
a  barbarous  horde,  but  as  a  child  of 
nature,  whose  copper-colored  face  was 
as  the  sun  shining  upon  many  waters; 
whose  voice  was  as  tuneful  as  that  of 
the  white-throated  sparrow;  and  whose 
heart  was  as  wide  as  the  universe. 

Interpreter  of  the  Eternal  Friend- 
ship, across  the  silent-footed  centuries 
glows  the  princely  salutation  of  this 
rare  primeval  spirit,  long  hushed  and 
voiceless,  yet  ineffably  gracious  and 
subtly  musical,  to  breathe  the  benefi- 
cence of  Nature, —  the  brooding  of 
purple  twilights,  softly  palpitant, 
where  odorous  woodlands  rim  the 
edge  of  dusk  and  wait  the  semblant 
footfall  of  the  radiant  stars. 


t'9l 


/  3 


^^^^^•^^••^B 

llinniinnu"11'" 

••INJIII 


